Andrew Shapiro is a seasoned strategic advisor and experienced board member with a wealth of experience in driving value creation, business transformation, and long-term growth for boards, investment funds, and family offices. With a unique combination of governance, finance, investment, legal, and restructuring expertise, he is a trusted counsel for high-stakes matters, including contested situations, M&A and reorganization transactions, and related litigation. As CEO of Lawndale Capital Management, where he managed its activist hedge funds for 32 years until 2024, Mr. Shapiro honed deep expertise in navigating complex proxy/activist campaigns and driving sustainable value creation by improving corporate governance, capital allocation, compensation design, and stakeholder engagement. As CEO of Lawndale Capital Advisors, he continues this same strategic approach and expertise as a consultant and advisor, delivering the governance transformation, value creation, and boardroom leadership that defined his successful 32-year tenure at Lawndale Capital Management before LCM became his personal investment vehicle. In addition to leading Lawndale, Mr. Shapiro has served as a Board Member, Officer, Advisor, and Consultant to corporate boards, family offices, investment funds, bankruptcy committees, and non-profits. He brings boardroom-tested creativity, integrity, and passion to negotiating solutions and improving corporate governance processes. Andrew’s extensive corporate board experience and recognition for governance thought leadership, include being named to the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Directorship 100 and serving on the Council of Institutional Investors (CII) Corporate Governance Advisory Council. He holds Board Leadership Fellow credentials from the NACD for over 12 years, a Certification in Private Company Governance from the Private Directors Association, and is qualified as an Audit Committee Financial Expert. Mr. Shapiro is a frequent speaker on corporate governance, fiduciary duty, and activist investing topics for several corporate governance & director’s education programs and has received national recognition through feature articles in Forbes, Barron’s, Institutional Investor, and a Business Week article that labeled him “The Gary Cooper of Governance.” In addition to his public company engagements, Mr. Shapiro is serving or has served as a Board Member or Advisor to early-stage start-ups, most recently, VideoXRM, Shareholder Vote Exchange, and Miravel. Mr. Shapiro also is a Board and Executive Committee member of the Northern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and serves as Board Advisor, Past Chair/President, and on the Investment Committee of the Mill Valley Library Foundation, on whose board he served in various leadership positions over many years. Before Lawndale’s 1992 founding, Mr. Shapiro was a trusted advisor, portfolio manager, and workout specialist in the family office of Sam Belzberg. Before joining First City, Mr. Shapiro was a Credit Officer involved in numerous corporate LBO and recapitalization transactions for Manufacturers Hanover Trust (now JP Morgan) and an Associate at The Spectrum Group, a private equity firm. Mr. Shapiro earned dual JD and MBA degrees from UCLA’s School of Law and Anderson School of Management and a BS in Business Administration from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
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